Sports Photographer Jed Jacobsohn Deals With Pranksters and Seagulls

Sports photographers run in to all sorts of problems during a shoot. Witty athletes are probably not the most severe of them. Jed Jacobsohn tells a story of how he got pranked by American football player Marshawn Lynch.

Taking editorial portraits of top performing athletes is like shooting a-listed film stars or royalty. They are busy people and they don’t have much time to spare for photography shoots. There’s often a tight schedule where you need to fit in, especially since the writer usually steals most of the time from the subject.

Knowing this, sports photographer Jed Jacobsohn where booked for a shooting with American football player Marshawn Lynch. Jed, a journalist and the producer had a got a generous but very specific time window when they could visit the running back of the Seattle Seahawks, at his house in Richmond, California.

They showed up at the set time, knocked on the door and out pops a head belonging to Marshawn Lynch. He looks at them perplexed and says: “Can I help you?”

“We here for the interview and photos” the producer starts to explain.

“That’s been cancelled. My publicist should have called you.” Marshawn replies.

A second of uncomfortable silence pass, during which a million thoughts run through Jed’s head. The writer wobbles awkwardly and the producer is just about to break sweat, when…

“Ahhh gotcha ya, come on it!”

When they realized they had fallen victim of Marshawn Lynch characteristic humor they could breathe out.

The writer was up first. Jed inquired where he could set the lights up. Marshawn explained he didn’t want any pictures in the house so Jed had to set up outside. He asked about the garage, which was all full of cars of course, and ended up setting up his gear in the driveway.

“We had to dodge a seagull attack which luckily missed the lights, Jed tells me.

“When our time to shoot, he was great and gave us all the looks we needed.”

They used three Pro-B4 1000 Air and six ProHead Plus. The main light was shaped with a large octagonal softboxt. For sidelights they used two strip lights. It illuminated the subject and gave a nice gradation on the background. With a Softlight Reflector and a grid he created fill light from behind.

For the second, more mobile setup Jed used a Pro-7b 1200 with a ProHead Plus with a Softbox RFi 3’ Octa.

“In the end it was successful shoot, as the client was happy, as well as the subject.”